After seeing a photo of one being launched the other day, I started to wonder. It looked pretty sizable.
Are these homemade things, or are they commercially available?
Can they be aimed? Why do they seem so ineffective?
They are sort of home-made, but they are still quite sophisticated. As can be seen in this Wiki article :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket.
I also recall reading somewhere that Iran have also been supplying them with commercially made rockets and mortars.
for the past year or so, most rockets have been the locally made Kassam. Over the past week , the terrorists have started using the heavier Grad rocket.
Most of them are made in local workshops. I’ve read that many of the larger rockets are of Chinese origin, supplied to Hamas by Iran.
They aren’t precision or guided weapons. They are area effect weapons. Used in large numbers, they have similar effects to a massive artillery barrage. For a conventional army, they are a cheap and quick way of augmenting traditional artillery forces. They were widely used in World War II.
Fired one at a time, they have little military value, other than to harass an enemy.